Norman Vorano is a National Scholar in Indigenous Visual and Material Culture of the Americas at Queen’s University, Canada. He holds the rank of assistant professor in the Department of Art History and is cross-appointed to the Agnes Etherington Art Centre as Curator of Indigenous Arts. Prior to joining the university in 2014, Vorano was the Curator of Contemporary Inuit Art and the Curator of Indigenous Art at the Canadian Museum of History [formerly Canadian Museum of Civilization], Canada’s national museum of social and cultural history.

He received his PhD from the Program in Visual and Cultural Studies, University of Rochester, NY, with a dissertation that critically examined the production, consumption and exhibition of Inuit carving in the mid-twentieth century. That research is now being prepared as a book manuscript for publication. Over the past five years, he has researched and published on the local dynamics of Inuit art in a world system, while working with emerging and senior contemporary artists in Cape Dorset, Pangnirtung and in urban centres in southern Canada. He maintains an Adjunct Research Professor status in the department of art history at Carleton University, Ottawa, and sits on the board of the Native American Art Studies Association, among other organizations.

His 2011 traveling exhibition (co-curated with Ming Tiampo and Asato Ikeda) and catalogue, Inuit Prints, Japanese Inspiration: Early Printmaking in the Canadian Arctic, examined the historical linkage between Japanese sosaku-hanga printmaking and the birth of Inuit printmaking in the late 1950s, a link forged by the artist and cultural intermediary James Houston. He is now working on mid-twentieth century graphic arts from the North Baffin Region.